Tag Archives: design thinking

design thinking, Interesting Marketing, Out of the Box, Product Review, User Experience, User Psychology

Durex Brinjal & Indian Food

 

Durex has just announced a launch an eggplant flavored condom.

These all dishes might taste a bit different but have a common ingredient? No points for guessing

 

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What if one fine day they decide to go extremely “Local” what would the brand look like then?

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Idli flavor? Misal flavor? Wada Pav flavor? Im sure our political parties would be more than happy to capitalize on this opportunity and regionalise and communalize the condoms.

Moving on to the Reason :

Durex is using this marketing stunt to promote a condom emoji because durex feels that introducing this emoji will help people talk freely talk about safe sex while chatting.

Currently people improvise on current emojis and icon to talk about the topic and rest is upto your imagination. By which i mean “people currently use brinjal icon for more than the purpose of using brinjal literally”

But simply to break the new “this is all just a marketing stunt and durex is not launching this eggplant condom”. Dear veggies you have been saved from being scared for the rest of your lives.

‘Durex belives launching Condom Emoji will encourage open discussions and raise awareness about the use and importance and hence propagate safe sex and protecting people against sexually transmitted diseases like including HIV and AIDS.

This is a good way to put your message across the and humorous too.

But how would this eventually lead to all that durex wants to achieve is a story of the next level.

 

Cheers

RuthlessUX

 

 

 

 

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design thinking, usability testing, User Experience, User Experience Review, User Psychology

If only opening doors was as easy as saying ‘Open Sesame’

Video

In the image below Can you figure which one is the door?

and how to open this door? Push? Pull? Slide?

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Entering the door of your office is the first th
ing most of the working class does before they start off and reach their desk for work.

Sounds simple ?

Recently i went to a Networking event at a posh corporate park in Bombay and had a great time. But B
eing the “paying attention to the details” kind of person that i am i figured that this entry door nothing
less than an algebraic  equation which i might not have been taught in school.

 

ruthlessux-door

 

So many of our doors are designed in a way that send confusing signals. Look at the doors in malls, Washrooms, Coffee Shops, Corporate offices etc.

I’m so sure we have all faced this one situation where we are pushing a door and someone at the opposite ends gets hit on the nose.

And worse is when we are using the revolving doors. There is a 100% possibility of you fumbling with your own-self and feel dis-balanced.

We are habituated instinctively to pull doors that have handles and  push doors that are flat or have no handles, so whenever a door does not fit in this regular realm of design, a sign or symbol of help is required. But then again it is not a guarantee that the door will be used as desired by the designer.

What may seem like a clever or minimal design soon seems as a design failure. I very often say “Simple and Minimal does not mean Kill the Utility or Make it Non-User Friendly”

Sometimes we might see handwritten arrows or signs or text indicating direction or action that needs to be taken.

For Eg: Toilet out of order! Yes that’s the sign i mostly see around

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At times the stickers are also insufficient to override what those handles are saying.

And sometimes signs alone cannot act as a solution in itself and hence there still must be some way of knowing what action and where it is to be done. Mostly a single word labels fail to signify or rather say build that intuition in a user to take action

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How many of us subconsciously land up pushing the door when it’s written Pull?

Words can be ambiguous when it comes to universal function and understanding. Hence we see Road signs use graphic illustrations. But words and graphics are together are understood much better.

“Doors do not need an instruction manual they should simply be “KISS” – Keep it Simple and Stupid” 

 

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And finally when you figure the way the product or item works user has a sense of achievement!

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Cheers

http://www.RuthlessUx.com

design thinking, usability testing, User Behaviour, User Experience, User Experience Review, User Psychology, UX Philosophy, ux review, Video Review

UX Review & Indian Websites

Video

Andy Kucharski-  Chicago

India is now moving ahead with the brilliant  #digitalIndia  campaign and now that alot of new ideas and technology are being embraced to make this campaign a successful  one, the first being the #netneutrality victory!

During the Drupal Con Asia Summit 2016 held at IIT Bombay – Powai I put forward my concerns on to some IT govt officials as to why our indian govt websites for eg: http://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/ , http://passportindia.gov.in/AppOnlineProject/welcomeLink and some more and lacking behind in terms of user experience and usability.

A healthy discussion with some Govt officials and Public Private Partnerships representatives, SME’s assured a better ux in the near future. They also asked me to send my feedback on how we can make things better on that front. Its a good start!

I also managed to collect alot of user feedback on the experience  they hav had using some of these websites.  Posting one of the Video Review i collected from

A Little About the Event:

The #drupalGov & #drupalcon summit at IIT Bombay ( https://events.drupal.org/asia2016 ) was an amazing journey filled with vouching for the free open source softwares, drupal as a FOSS, tech, platforms, etc.

Interacting with members of DIETY (Department of Electronics & Information Technology  and National Informatics Centre Services Inc. (NICSI) India during the sessions was a great experience.

 

Review by

Shaheena Attarwala (UX & Usability specialist Mumbai)

User Experience, User Experience Review, ux review, Video Review

www.Quikr.com User Experience Review

Video

 

Reviewing the www.quikr.com website (Add to Favourite Feature)
Apparently even after the the user adds products he likes and might wish to later on re-visit them this feature is handy but unfortunately this feature seems to be working JUST NOT FINE on their site.

There is no such list that allows users to go back and view the saved items. So the purpose of ADD TO FAVOURITE on every product page gets totally irrelevant beyond this point.

 

Review by

Shaheena Attarwala (UX & Usability specialist Mumbai)

design thinking, User Experience, User Experience Review, ux review, Video Review

Reviewing the ICICI Bank Website

Video

Reviewing the ICICI Bank online website www.icicibank.com

Getting started with the log in section.

Its a intuitive user behaviour that on hover if there is an action happening it will undo the same action once we hover no more. So on the right side i see no point of having a HIDE link. Its irrelevant and sits above all the other important links which is an absolutely redundant idea to me.

The way the right side vertical menu has been handled is not very pleasant.

The highlight – active – hover functions are not in sync.

If log in section is orange on hover the same pattern must be followed across the vertical menu.

Unless i read the menu link and the opened up heading on the top it is left to my imagination as to which section i am actually on.

This isn’t rocket science that consistency is one of the important keys to a designing a good user experience and user flow.

Looks like some effort has gone into deliberately making it complicated.

Even if the end goal was to make sure that the LOGIN section is the highlight of the menu there we surely better ways to handle it.

User Behaviour, User Experience, User Psychology, User Study, UX Philosophy

Is user experience all about users?

To design the best User Experience , pay attention to what users do, not what they say or ask for. Users don’t know what they want. They can only tell us what they don’t want or dislike and this is a universal phenomenon. For example: the audience going for movies can only like or dislike the movie they will never be able to exactly tell how the movie could have been better had the makers done this or that. Its a gamble in a sort of way.

Hence user studies can only aid this much is building a great user experience. Eventually the more empathetic you are towards solving the problem of the users the better are the chances of success in your user experience.

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